Artist Statement
I like to describe my style of collage as Pop Geometry, referencing a golden age of American graphic design from the 1930s to the 1960s, with its witty and inventive typography and stylish Art Deco influences. The geometric impulse has always been there in my art, reflecting a fascination with early twentieth century art movements such as Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism and their strong sense of graphic design and architectural form.
My collages tend to be small, using a scale appropriate to the materials used. I build them up slowly and methodically, each one a labor of love, with the concentration and precision of a miniaturist.
The graphic nature of the imagery, the inclusion of text and image, also project a storytelling impulse on my part, a desire to record a “social history” of the city as a repository of our dreams and memories. Each collage could be described as a poem with humorous and playful anecdote.
Just as in real life the city is analogous to a living organism, forever in flux with new construction replacing the old, so in my collage I attempt to fuse the mythic past with the contemporary skyline.
My paintings also record the city in similarly intense and evocative ways. They tend to be unpeopled landscapes, cast with moody skies: a theatrical iteration of the city. Stylistically, I depict the city as a patchwork of abstract shapes built up slowly in layers. The final work might be superficially photographic or realist in style, but on reflection offers a heightened sense of reality that is intended to be dreamlike or cinematic in mood.
My collages tend to be small, using a scale appropriate to the materials used. I build them up slowly and methodically, each one a labor of love, with the concentration and precision of a miniaturist.
The graphic nature of the imagery, the inclusion of text and image, also project a storytelling impulse on my part, a desire to record a “social history” of the city as a repository of our dreams and memories. Each collage could be described as a poem with humorous and playful anecdote.
Just as in real life the city is analogous to a living organism, forever in flux with new construction replacing the old, so in my collage I attempt to fuse the mythic past with the contemporary skyline.
My paintings also record the city in similarly intense and evocative ways. They tend to be unpeopled landscapes, cast with moody skies: a theatrical iteration of the city. Stylistically, I depict the city as a patchwork of abstract shapes built up slowly in layers. The final work might be superficially photographic or realist in style, but on reflection offers a heightened sense of reality that is intended to be dreamlike or cinematic in mood.
